Scrub bashing on Popehouse Moor SSSI

[Maggie] We've taken a huge stride forward in habitat management this year...




...but now it's time to finish the job by tidying up! We've been burning brash from our 'scrub bashing'.

We have a lot of really overgrown hedgerows on the farm, and in Popehouse Moor SSSI the willows have 'fall off' the Devon banks, and branches have taken root in what should really be grassland. Too much willow isn't good for wet grassland - it sucks the water from the ground, transpiring it through leaves, drying out the soil.

If you've been on a guided tour here, you may not agree with botanist Mary Breeds, who last year told us the site would be better wetter, but we've taken her advice and cut back some of the invasion.

My Dad started it over Christmas - with just a bow saw. Inspired by the potential that small difference made, we had 2 days chainsaw work done. That's by no means all of it, and we don't want to hit it all too hard in one go. But it has revealed some of the old hedge boundaries, and will significantly increase the grassland area.

Now we have to get the branches off the ground before the spring comes. If the birds start nesting there we won't be able to shift them. And the boughs will set root in the wet ground again, making the problem worse than ever.

Like they have in this picture.

So it's been bonfire time...

And for anyone who's thinking 'what a waste', we've saved what we could, as you can see in these wood piles. Our trouble is getting it off the moor and back up to the house where we can burn it. There's no vehicle access and the ground is boggy.



Log by log then? Lots more excuses to go down to this special place!

We've been selected as a Much Better Adventure!

We are delighted to have been accepted as one of the early members of muchbetteradventures.com, a carefully selected community of fantastic adventure providers who have a strong ongoing commitment to sustainability...


You can see us featured as part of their local travel directory, which puts you in direct contact (no commission) with handpicked active holidays, tours, courses and accommodation. The site also provides travellers reviews, the resources you need to book a low carbon journey, and has started a collection of community built guides to each activity or sport, where users are invited to share their favourite spots, useful info, ideas and inspiration.

Since going live a few months ago the site has grown quickly. Muchbetteradventures.com aim to build the widest and fairest selection of responsible adventure travel and equipment choices that outdoor lovers have ever seen, and bring support to many important conservation and community development projects around the world.

Check out our Wheatland Farm eco lodge profile. You can help us to benefit from this site by leaving a review of us, and by spreading the word to your friends.

Green green heating fuel

Here's some of our green heating fuel, three times green but not because it's green wood though...





...it's actually dry and seasoned - always more efficient in a wood burner.

More importantly, it's reusing waste - saw mill offcuts.


And it's local - the mobile mill is working a wood about 8 miles from us.


And on top of that it's a conservation project restoring an oak woodland by selectively felling conifer plantation. So the felling will be matched by a rejuvenated 'native species' woodland in our lovely corner of Devon.

And the icing on the cake? It probably saves us a significant outlay on heating oil for the house. OK, the house is 'cool' in the original meaning of the term, but we haven't had to buy central heating oil for about a year and a half now.

Here's Ian unloading the trailer.

And here's another earlier blog post about this source of sustainable timber - which we also hope to use in the new eco lodge we're building. The cutting list has been sent off already!

Energy monitoring put to good use

Energy monitoring has helped us make a surprising but sustainable business decision. We're no longer rushing to change the shower in Beech lodge over to the solar hot water system as there is no energy saving case for it. Let me explain...




Since last summer I've been following the energy consumption of our lodges and cottage pretty closely. I take meter reading after most bookings, and work out the energy use per night and also per guest night for each holiday.

Two of the lodges have all their hot water on solar systems with immersion top up (they sleep 4-6 people). Larger Beech Lodge sleeps 6-8 and has solar hot water for its bath and basins (with immersion top up), but not for its shower, which is on-demand electic. Otter cottage is different - and I'll come back to that!

After we finished the solar installation, we meant to change the shower in Beech Lodge over to solar hot water in the autumn, but held off, worrying that the winter sun in Devon wouldnt be anything like enough to provide hot water for a potential 8 showers a day, and that the immersion heater would be slow to keep up too - especially as we have a timer switch limiting the heaters to two hours on at a time.

And now, the energy monitoring confirms that this was a good choice, and in fact has persuaded us not to change it at all. Look at this graph of energy use per night for all 4 of our holiday accommodation units.

Beech Lodge, the brown squares, is pretty much indistinguishable from the other lodges in its energy use per night, even though it sleeps the most people (up to 8). In fact, Otter cottage consistently uses more energy than any of the lodges, even in the summer, even though it only sleeps 4.

And when you look at the energy use per guest per night, you see that even in summer, when most of the energy use will be for water, rather than heating, Beech Lodge with its electric shower (blue diamond now) is no worse than the other lodges. And in the winter, it's arguably better.

That's probably because more people are sharing the winter heating component in the larger lodge. And that's probably also part of the reason that Otter Cottage energy use per guest night soars in the winter. The cottage attracts more couples than families, and its conventional stone construciton makes it harder to heat.

There are some other excuses. Otter cottage electricity supply runs the shared washing machine and also an always-on pump. Nevertheless, having now seen Otter Cottage's rising winter consumption we'll be looking for ways to reduce it. Solar hot water, planned for this spring, would probably be good here - it would run the bath and basin (and probably the shower too as there are fewer guests to service).

And we have some other ideas for making the space heating more efficient - but that's for another post.

Christmas and New Year waste

[Maggie] This post is a big thank you to everyone who stayed at our eco lodges and cottage over Christmas and New Year. We asked you to recycle and you certainly did!



Totted up, a total of 146 people nights over the two week holiday period (that figure includes us) produced just 13kg of kerbside waste - and at least 43kg of recycling. I say at least, because that doesn't include the cardboard and paper yet to be taken to the recycling centre, or any estimate of food waste going into the green cones - and I know you were using them.

So at a time when people often falter on their green intentions, you've really made a difference, cutting what might otherwise have gone to landfill by well over 75%, and probably somewhere between 80 and 90%.

Thank you so much. Sorting the rubbish can be one of the more disheartening jobs for accommodation providers trying to be green - but not this time, and that was an extra Christmas present for me!

Recycled office paper

I've bought a ream of recycled copier paper. Not big news, you'd think...




...Except that I can't remember when we last bought paper, so this time I thought I'd make a note of it and see how long it lasts.

We just don't use it much - the prompt this time was needing to refresh the welcome information in the lodges and cottage.

We used to buy office supplies from Viking, but got so fed up with endless catalogues we asked them to take us off their mailing list. The last thing we bought from them was a replacement printer I think - delivered to the farm house door. A fat brochure was delived to the door separately the next day by courier. The paperwork was delivered to the door separately the day after that by the postman. And we'd partly done it to save driving to a shop!

This recycled paper came from a local high street retailer, though I've seen it in the big supper markets too. At least it's getting easier to buy recycled products now.

I'll add a comment on this post when the paper runs out. Sweepstake anyone?

Cutting landfill by 75 per cent

[Maggie] Since September, when I started monitoring our rubbish, our recycling has cut what would otherwise go to landfill by 75 per cent...




...it could be higher, but I don't want to over-egg things. For those that need convincing about green stats (and why not), here's how I work that out.

From the beginning of September to date (13 December) we've put out 132kg of residual waste for 895 'people nights' (that includes us). Our kerbside recycling for that period was 126.5kg (weighed each week on the bathroom scales).

So far, that means we cut our landfill by about 48 per cent.

As well as what the council collect, we've taken cardboard (32kg), paper (49kg), mixed food plastic (12kg) to the recycling centre, as well as other waste they separate and recycle there (metal items, electrical items, batteries guests separate from their general waste etc - 36.5kg in total).

That means we've reduced what goes direct to the tip by about 65 per cent.

But we also encourage guests to put all their food waste into the biodigesters, as we do (well, we compost mostly, but the digesters can even cope with left overs like pizza).

That's harder to gauge, but we'll try...

If you're interested in UK food waste statistics, a new report (November 2009) makes very interesting reading.

The average UK household of 2.4 people throws away 330kg of food/drink a year, or just over 6kg a week. An average household of 4+ throws away 480kg a year.

About 9.6 per cent of that is disposed of down the drain.

So for arguments sake, and ignoring what goes down the drain, the average household throws out about 298kg of food waste a year, or 0.82kg per household per night.

Our guests are usually groups of more than 2.4! Often families, very rarely singles. But for argument's sake and so as not to be greedy, let's stick with the average and also assume guests only compost half the UK average - and the other half still ends up in the bin.

And for ourselves, since we're careful about food, I'll assume we compost/biodigest the average for a 2.4 household (6kg a week), not the figure for the 4 person household we actually are. That brings our estimated food kept out of landfill to 157.3 kg to date - and that's a conservative estimate.


So, in total, that's 413kg recycled and 132.5 to landfill - a 75.7 per cent reduction.

Still a lot though - even better would be to bring the overall amount down further. 545kg is a lot of waste, even if some can be re-used. It always makes me think of times before bin collections when rubbish had to be disposed of at home (usually down the privy). We'd be digging a lot of new out houses... When I get a chance I read My Zero Waste - a blog by the Green family who aim to have the bin emptied just once this year. Inspiring!